separation, the

The event in which we apparently separated from God, which gave birth to the entire phenomenal universe, including form, time, space and perception, and which the mind re-enacts in nearly every instant. The apparent split with God for which the Atonement is the reconciliation or remedy. The "detour into fear" (T-2.I.2:1); the "descent from magnitude into littleness" (T-10.IV.8:5); "the denial of union" (T-12.I.10:6). The separation began with the idea that we could make ourselves into separate beings who were both special in the eyes of their Creator (see T-13.III.10:2) and were self-created (see T-10.V.4:3, T-21.II.10). This produced what seemed to be a real event in which we tore ourselves out of God's Mind (see T-5.V.3), shattered Heaven into countless separate bodies and intervals of time (see T-28.III.7:4), became isolated entities, and then made a world of separate individuals, forms and moments. Yet the separation was merely a psychological event, in which, through denial and dissociation, we fell asleep to reality and dreamt of separation (see sleep). In our dream, this experience has lasted billions of years, but in reality it lasted only an instant, for God's Answer ended it immediately. And even this instant never occurred (see M-2.2:8). The core message of the Course is that "the separation never occurred"(T-6.II.10:7).